The patient critical care environment in hospitals is becoming increasingly crowded due to the number of pieces of medical equipment associated with critical care, which pieces of equipment embody various critical care technologies. Specifically, within the critical care environment there is generally located a critical care bed, around which are positioned a ventilator, I.V. pumps, various monitors, and one or more computer terminals for entering patient care data. The numerosity of pieces of equipment spaced about a critical care hospital room and the patient bed results in patient care inefficiency, as a care provider must continually monitor and operate all the pieces of equipment, while such are not advantageously ergonomically arranged.
In addition to the critical care environment being crowded and somewhat cumbersome around which to work, the transfer of the various pieces of equipment along with the patient on the critical care bed from one room to another within the hospital is tedious, time consuming and difficult to manage. One reason is that the critical care bed, and the various technologies associated with the critical care environment, are generally each individually supported on wheeled support structures. Therefore, when transferring the patient from one room to another room, several pieces of wheeled equipment must simultaneously be rolled to the new location. Not only is this task cumbersome, but also it is time consuming. Further, since all the various technologies must be first disconnected from their respective connections to AC power at the wall in the room, the various technologies must either operate on some sort of stand-by scheme during transportation, or must be manually operated. Swift transfer of the various pieces of equipment with the critical care bed from one room to another is mandatory in order to minimize down time on these pieces of equipment yet is made very difficult by the clutter associated with the several individual pieces of equipment.